Episode Transcript
Speaker 0 00:03 Welcome to brain junk. I'm Amy Barton and I'm trace kicker and it's time for a brainstorm. So Amy, today I want to share with you an internationally published author and coauthor on the subject of physics F D C Willard FDC Willard. Got it. Okay. You've never heard of him, right? Correct. Yes, because he's a cat, but he's an internationally known cat. Yeah. Well there's, let me, let me fill you in on the story. So, okay. Back in 1975 Jack H Hetherington was a professor of physics at Michigan state university and he was wrapping up a paper and what you do with a academic papers that you send it to colleagues and they kind of review it before you try to get it published. The colleague looked it over and he said it's great, but you used we and us when you were writing it and Hetherington was the only author. Oh no. And sometimes using the Royal we is okay.
Speaker 0 01:02 But the F the publication that he was sending it to, physical review letters only does the we, if there's more than one author, this is 1975 it's a world without fine and replace. Oh my goodness. Yeah, I know. I was like, Oh, it's not a big deal. Actually. Big deal. Still have to read through and check everything. Yep. So that would mean retyping <inaudible> I probably, yeah, the entire article. So he said the quote was he went home and he thought about it. He gave it some thought, the article two, three and four Adam exchange effects in BCC. Three helium looked to be important and groundbreaking and he didn't want to take the time to like redo it cause he wanted to send it in. Yeah. I want to get it out there. So he decided to add a coauthor, his cat Chester, and he couldn't just type Chester, you know, on the paper.
Speaker 0 01:55 So he made the name FDC for Felix domesticus. So a domestic cat and the C was for Chester and then Willard was Hetherington his father's name. Ah. So he slaps it on the paper, he sends it in, it gets accepted and it came out pretty quickly because people were like, wow, this is an amazing article. We would like to talk with mr Hetherington. You know dr Heatherington and we'd like to talk with dr Willard, your colleague. Yes. And the university is like, there's no FTC Willard working here. What's going on? They figured out it was the cat. The Hetherington has a couple of reasons why he did this one. He was like, I didn't want to retype it. Another one, some places he was saying, well, multiple authors on a paper at that time you would get less pay or recognition. And so he didn't really want to, you know, he was like, I don't want to bring somebody else in.
Speaker 0 02:48 Right. You know, and then he also claimed in later years that he knew that when people found out it was a cat, the article would get ahold of this notoriety and people would be like, Oh my gosh, the cat is a coauthor. I should check out this article. And it just exploded. Right. Any publicity is good publicity. The only people who didn't like the idea of Chester being the coauthor were the editors of physical review letters. They were not thrilled. I can see how they might feel like they would be incurring some credibility issues by publishing your cat's world because how did nobody, you know, look to make sure that this was, but FDC Willard went on to author other papers and also coauthor, um, and there are even several signed copies of the original article, so it's got Hetherington signature and Chester's footprints on it. And Chester, Oh, little detailed.
Speaker 0 03:42 Chester was a Siamese cat. So imagine this very prim and proper blue wine cat. I feel like that's a good signing these papers. Yup. Yeah. And in the end, Michigan state university asked Chester to join the faculty as a visiting professor. Ah, awesome. That's one of those things that just couldn't happen now because it's a 10 minute fix now. Or it would immediately be discovered because they Googled him and uh, yeah, he ready for the days before cell phones. Ratigans and internet and shenanigans were better, I think. Yeah. There was this guy and he coauthored with his cat food, but uh, so yay science. Yay you physicist net. Never let anyone tell you that your stodgy and stuffy with your numbers. That is definitely one of the big takeaways from brain junk for me is that scientists on the surface, very formal, very prim. They've got a lot of proving to do and a lot of documenting of that, but so funny. So whimsical, emo in certain moments said little inner prankster. Yes. Yup. It sneaks out every now and then. We're on Facebook and Instagram as brain junk podcast and you can find us on Twitter as at my brain junk trace and I will catch you next time when we share more of everything you never knew you wanted to know and I guarantee you will not be bored.
